I also heard many farmers are still using it to trade cattle or watch weather forecasts of their region. I wonder how they will handle the end of the Minitel.
They will still have Teletext on their TV's which provides a lot of the same information (though only one way).
For those not familiar with Teletext, here is an online portal as an example: http://www.rtbf.be/services/teletexte/ - some teletext services even offer chatting via SMS messages, which then show up on the TV screen.
yeah weather forcasts must be great compared to e.g. a newspaper but inferior to a computer of course. Simple internet machines have a clear place in society, thats been shown again and again from minitel to cheap mobile phones in the third world...
For those not familiar with Teletext, here is an online portal as an example: http://www.rtbf.be/services/teletexte/ - some teletext services even offer chatting via SMS messages, which then show up on the TV screen.